God of War

NINE

SMOKE ROLLED DOWN from the heights of the Acropolis, a black greasy pall that smothered the Parthenon on the mountainside and came near to strangling Kratos. The tough armor he’d taken from the undead legionnaires shielded him from the killing heat of the flames and protected his Ares-burned back, but it couldn’t help him breathe. Choking, gasping for air, he had to turn back and seek a clearer way toward the summit.

None of the war god’s fireballs had yet touched this particular neighborhood, but the area had not escaped the attentions of Ares’s legions. There were bands of roving monsters of all descriptions: combinations of Minotaurs and Centaurs for cavalry, Cyclopes for heavy infantry, skeleton archers, legionnaires, harpies, wraiths… and what was that?

The creatures looked like hideous women with a single long snake’s tail instead of legs. Writhing serpents crowned their heads, and crackling green beams of power poured out from heir eyes…

It seemed that the death of their queen had brought the rest of the Gorgons into the fight.

But… all of Greece knew there had been only three Gorgons: Stheno, Euryale, and of course the recently deceased Medusa. Yet Kratos saw a dozen of the repulsive creatures, and he had no doubt that others were spreading through the city at that very instant. Killing them would feed his anger and give him momentary distraction from the ever-present nightmare fluttering at the edge of his mind, but that would be only a waste of time that he and the Oracle could not spare. A permanent solution to his visions awaited. He hunted for a clear path to Athena’s oracle.

Kratos ducked into an alley and scrambled up a rain barrel, from which he could swing himself onto a balcony and clamber up another story or two to the roof.

Athens burned.

Save only the neighborhood around him, the entire city was in flames. Now and then he caught sight of the Long Walls through the smoke. The flash of firelight off brandished weapons told him that soldiers still wasted their lives in a futile attempt to hold a wall that no longer defended the city. Everybody had to die somewhere; if defending their useless wall gave them the illusion of dying for a noble cause, who was he to gainsay their futile heroism? Men had died under his slashing blades for less.

Kratos progressed slowly across the rooftop, scouting for a path to follow uphill. He moved with caution, to avoid attracting the attention of the harpies that swooped hither and thither through the smoke. The old man at the gates had said the Oracle’s chamber was on the east side of the Parthenon. Across the face of the Acropolis, he could pick out faint brown tendrils that might be footpaths, but the billowing smoke clouded them and hid other avenues entirely.

When he moved to the edge of the roof to get a better view, an arrow sang past his ear. Kratos fell flat and let more arrows sail over him. He chanced a quick look over the edge of the roof and located a handful of undead archers who’d taken a nearby balcony for their vantage point. Kratos saw a man venture into the street, only to take an arrow through the belly, and when the arrow detonated, the blast of flame splattered the man’s guts across the front of his own house. The archers held fire only when they could find no further targets.

Kratos ducked when a new ball of Greek fire exploded a quarter mile away, roughly where he thought the road leading to the summit of the Acropolis might turn upward. A grim picture painted itself within his mind.

Athena’s worshippers would naturally run for the Parthenon when they found their city under attack by the God of War. Ares had sown fire across the whole city, sparing only this quarter, through which ran the road up the Acropolis-which would naturally draw those worshippers like flies to turds. Then the god had his monsters patrolling the streets, preventing further movement.

Kratos understood: The God of War was deliberately funneling the most pious and devoted of Athena’s flock into one small area of the city-making it look as if this was the safest area, as well as the only route to the temple of their goddess. Instead of fleeing into the countryside, where tracking them down and slaughtering them would be a daunting task even for Ares’s minions, they were packing themselves into the illusory safety of this single neighborhood.

Concentrating where they could most easily be destroyed. All at once. No fuss. No mess. No chasing people through the forest or rooting them out of mountain caves. The citizens of Athens had made of themselves nothing more than cattle rushing to the slaughterhouse floor. It was brutal, and he knew it would be very effective.

He’d done this sort of thing himself.

Kratos grabbed his temples to keep his head from exploding as an image burned hotter than the sun through his brain.

No! It couldn’t be… The dead, those he had slaughtered in Athena’s temple… Guilty! He had killed Gasping, Kratos forced the horrible vision away. It seized him more powerfully each time, but giving in to the horror wasn’t going to make reaching the Parthenon any easier. He could conquer his own nightmares-for a short while-but it seemed the monsters were gathering on the streets below to block his path. And he knew those undead archers hadn’t forgotten he was up here. He had to move. Fast.

On the other hand, he saw no reason to surrender the high ground.

Three strides for momentum took him to the lip of the roof, and a mighty leap sent him hurtling over the street to the opposite roof. The skeleton archers below were so startled, none of them got off a shot. As he sprinted along, he heard the commanding bellow of a Minotaur, and he knew he’d been seen by the forces below.

His next jump drew a scatter of fire arrows, though none came close-and he could see undead legionnaires mounted on the backs of Centaurs racing parallel to his path on the streets below. Another rooftop and another leap, and harpies began to swoop and dive at him. He dodged and ducked across roof after roof without slowing, using the blades as grapnels to swing himself over gaps too wide to bridge, and whirling them about his head as he ran to keep the harpies at bay.

He sprinted from roof to roof, running faster than the harpies could pursue-but the shouts and bellows of the monsters below came even faster. Not even Kratos could outrun the speed of sound. More of Ares’s creatures streamed toward him, and he leaped from the last house of the neighborhood and dived once again into the fires and smoke of the rest of the city.

One Minotaur had the bright idea of calling for all Cyclopes, Centaurs, and other Minotaurs to forget about trying to catch the racing Spartan; instead, they should batter the walls of the burning buildings, weakening every structure in Kratos’s path.

Battling the strangling smoke and roasting flames, Kratos jumped to a rooftop which collapsed under his weight. A frantic scrabble at the structure beneath the splintered roof tiles and a swift overhead whip of a Blade of Chaos, which embedded it in a more-solid rooftop ahead, gained him enough purchase to keep aloft. A quick glance below at the countless enemies of all descriptions crowding there told him in no uncertain terms the outcome of an unlucky fall.

Grimly, he ran on, knowing that each rooftop would prove more fragile than the last-and even if he could stay up there all the way to the foot of the Acropolis, he would then have to descend to the streets and either deal with his pursuers or be slaughtered along with all these useless Athenians.

Better a nameless death being swallowed by the Hydra in the Grave of Ships than having his corpse burned in the same fires as those of his people’s most bitter enemy.

Along the base of the sheer cliffs below the Acropolis, Kratos raced parallel to the rock, making for the roadway. These buildings were sturdier, as they had the support of the rock wall at their back, and keeping close to the cliff face as he rounded the curve let him gain ground on his pursuers.

There! A gap in the greasy smoke showed him the broad flagstones of the roadway just ahead. With redoubled energy, Kratos hurled himself toward it-but only three houses short of the open ground he craved, roof tiles crumbled and the fire-weakened walls of the building collapsed around him. Worse, his charred, blistered back betrayed him. His usual strength had faded, and twisting about sent knives of pain into his shoulders, which prevented him from saving himself from the fall.

By the time he found his feet and shook himself free of the rubble, they were on him.

Undead legionnaires rushed him, swords drawn. The Blades of Chaos found first his hands, then their necks. More pressed in behind, and Kratos leaned in to them. He drove his way forward as though they were only earth, he was a miner, and the blades were his picks and shovels. Contemptuously, he stepped over their halved bodies.

Kratos found more legionnaires in the broad courtyard. These took a little more effort to dispatch, but he did so, regretting every second he wasted in mindless slaughter.

He made for the street, only to encounter more monsters at the gate. Three Cyclopes growled and swung their prodigious war clubs; any impact would have spattered his brains all over the street, but that wasn’t what worried Kratos. Even when they missed him, those clubs knocked huge holes in the walls. The already-fragile structures shuddered with every blow. On the rooftops above the courtyard, skeletal archers clattered into place, beginning a rain of flaming arrows to cut off any hope of retreat.

One brief glance over his shoulder was enough to escalate his sense of peril: Now coming up to support the Cyclopes were six Minotaurs, spreading to fill all gaps.

They came for him. All at once.

Pinned between the archers and the combination force of Minotaurs and Cyclopes, he saw no way out.

But he wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.

“Come on, then!” he roared. “Come and die!”

Kratos blocked an ax blow from one Minotaur and lunged, catching a Cyclops behind the hamstring. A slash hobbled the monster, but as he limped back, the other two crowded close to join the battle.

Kratos slipped out from under another earthshaking club blow from a Cyclops and began a steady parry. The Minotaurs had ditched their axes in favor of long spears, with which they could strike at him without getting in the way of the Cyclopes; one slip would leave him as full of holes as a cheese grater. They coordinated their attacks like a well-trained, experienced unit.

He was only one mortal against myriad creatures dragged from Hades, but it was he who attacked. “Out of my way or die where you stand!” he thundered, and then undertook to make his boast into a simple statement of fact.

Kratos slipped between the Cyclopes and struck a mighty double-bladed blow into the chest of the nearest Minotaur. New strength and power flowed up the chains into his body as the blades drank the man-bull’s life. He whirled to hamstring another Cyclops, but the enormous monster was faster than it looked. The one-eyed creature swept its vast club into a rising parry and cleared the blades from between them, then dropped its club and wrapped its arms around Kratos’s chest. The Cyclops squeezed until the Spartan’s ribs began to crack and clouds of blackness washed through Kratos’s vision.

The Cyclops roared its triumph-until its lone eye focused on the Spartan’s face.

Kratos was smiling.

The blades came down at the joining of the Cyclops’s neck and shoulders, carving a gore-splashing V downward until they met at the creature’s monstrous heart. Kratos released the blades to seize the Cyclops’s head-which still blinked its eye in astonishment-and then hurled it, along with much of the creature’s spine, into the path of the jabbing spears of the Minotaurs.

As the rest of the Cyclops’s body shuddered and collapsed, Kratos kicked off it into a small gap between the corpse and the stone wall.

His victory was short-lived. His battle with the Cyclops, quick as it had been, had allowed the Minotaurs to surround him. Kratos spun in a full circle and saw a dozen of the bullheaded monsters advancing. Even the Blades of Chaos would not slay so many. If he engaged one or two, that many more would attack from behind. He crouched behind the Cyclops’s massive body, using it as a battlement, while he reached back over his shoulder-and his hand filled with twisting serpents. The Minotaurs rushed him from every direction. He swung the deathly head of Medusa out before him.

Emerald energy crackled out from the Gorgon’s dead eyes, and each foe it touched instantly stiffened into cold gray limestone. One Minotaur, caught in mid-thrust, toppled sideways, knocking another to the street-where it shattered like a dropped clay pot.

Kratos sprang to action. Ten seconds was all he had.

The blades flashed out, and where they struck, the statues shattered. Kratos leaped up to the shoulders of the one remaining Cyclops and kicked himself up and out again, toppling the frozen creature, whose weight crushed its hamstrung brother and the last two Minotaurs.

And as Medusa’s fell power abated, chunks and shards of petrified monster turned back into meat and bone and blood, a sprawl of carnage that filled the street.

“Lady Aphrodite,” Kratos murmured, “I should never have doubted.”

A whisper, hardly more than a zephyr in the tumult, came beguilingly to his ear: “Perhaps someday I’ll let you apologize. Personally.”

He released Medusa’s head back over his shoulder, sheathed the blades, and ran as though all the forces of Hades snapped at his heels.

Which they did.

Dodging, he went uphill, although he found no easy path toward the Parthenon. It seemed that all the mountain burned. The acres atop the Acropolis flamed with the fury of a new sun.

“Helios…” Kratos wondered aloud. “Have you joined my enemies?”

Athena had enlisted the aid of powerful allies, but Ares might have Olympian aid as well. The political intrigues of Mount Olympus were mysterious and deadly for any mortals caught up in them. He wasn’t too concerned. He had sworn ten years ago that whatever dared to stand between him and his vengeance would be destroyed, whether it be man, beast, or god.

Anyone who wanted to live had better stay out of his way.

He started up a narrow street that looked promising, but then mist swirled out of nowhere in front of him. He swatted at it with his right-hand blade, but the mist formed a thicker cloud just beyond his reach. Kratos settled the blades into a fighting grip. Whatever new threat this might prove to be, he would destroy it as he had all others. When the mist flowed and took the shape of a thin column, he swung as hard as he could.

The blade passed through the mist, leaving not so much as a swirl to mark its passage.

He was debating whether he should use the Rage of Poseidon or if Medusa’s Gaze might give this mist enough form for him to strike. Before he had decided, the mist solidified into a tall, beautiful woman wearing little more than thin streamers of cloud for a skirt and a top wrapped around her bodice but once. The material was as transparent as the mist, but even as he watched, she became more substantial.

Some sort of succubus? A Siren? It didn’t matter-she looked solid enough now. He slashed into the woman with a strike that would cut a mortal in half.

She did not appear to notice. “Do not fear, Kratos. I am the Oracle of Athens, here to help you defeat Ares. Revealed in my divinations are secrets unknown even to the gods. Find my temple to the east and I will show you how to murder a god.”

“Oracle! Wait!” Kratos dropped the blades and stared through the once again empty space. He looked up the hill toward where the Oracle had pointed. A misty gesture, vagrant air currents-how could he know?

The path narrowed quickly, but he kept climbing. When he reached a spot halfway up, he looked back over Athens and shook his head in dismay. The fighting was nearly over. Ares roared with evil mirth, bellowing flame like a volcano, as his army flowed like the sea through the streets of Athens.

“God of War,” Kratos said through his teeth, “I have not forgotten you. For what you did that night, this city will be your grave!”

An earthquake shook the city center. Kratos had to stop and widen his stance in order to keep his feet. Smoke from the burning buildings cleared for a moment to give him a direct view of Ares himself.

The huge god stepped over the Long Wall and strode up the causeway, stepping on Athenians too slow to escape his advance. The war god roared, shaking the heavens and the earth. He reached down, caught a soldier, and flicked him away as he might an annoying bug. The screams were thin and high and then died along with the man when he crashed into the roof of a temple devoted to Zeus. Then Ares began stamping on any who caught his eye, his fury palpable.

Ares rampaged through the city, crushing buildings and kicking away people in the square. The city was entirely at the mercy of the God of War, and mercy was in short supply. Ares had no more mercy than he did compassion or self-restraint. It was a bad night to be Athenian.

Kratos was a Spartan. Was there ever a good night to be Athenian?

He turned his back on Ares and followed the roadway upward onto the Acropolis. Another earthquake took him off his feet, forcing him to roll clear as a stone wall collapsed beside him. Kratos climbed back to his feet to look into the city.

Ares had drawn a sword the size of ten warships and raised it high above his head. The God of War brought it crashing down again with such force that houses for blocks around crumbled as the shock wave spread throughout the city. Ares delivered another blow, but this time Kratos was braced for it. He turned back to his path and set out toward the Parthenon.

“They come, they’re coming!” A woman on the roof of a nearby temple shrieked the warning, then scrambled down a rickety ladder to the sacristy’s front door. An undead archer fired from among Kratos’s pursuers. The shaft pinned the woman to the wood frame, which caught fire as the arrow exploded.

Kratos ducked and shifted aside when he heard a furious flapping of wings that he knew all too well, but he was not this harpy’s target. The foul beast swooped down to pluck at a woman running with a child in her arms. The harpy grabbed the child and carried it aloft. The woman screamed and threw rocks, but the harpy soared upward to hundreds of feet. Then it let the child drop.

“Noooo!” Kratos raged. He took a step and reached out, as if he could keep the child safe. He couldn’t. A vision of his beloved daughter filled his eyes-and then blood replaced the vision. Again.

The woman frantically tried to catch her infant, racing toward it with arms outstretched, only to see her child’s brains dashed out on the rubble of another temple. The harpy swooped low again, this time clawing at the woman. She fought off the flying monster but tripped on a broken flagstone.

Kratos raced forward and then leaped with all his prodigious strength. His fingers slipped away from the harpy’s wing but caught a taloned foot. The harpy screeched in rage and fought to break free. Rage at the child’s death lent Kratos the raw determination to clutch down hard enough to drag the harpy from the sky. The hideous creature crashed to the ground, only feet from where the child had perished.

A twist, a turn, and Kratos worked up to where he could smash his fist into the harpy’s face. He continued to pummel the monster until only pulp remained. Panting, he held the scrawny neck in his grip, then cast the corpse away so its foul blood would not mingle with that of the fallen child.

“Help me, help me!” the bereft woman called to Kratos. “A trapdoor inside. Safety. Sanctuary is yours if you will help me!” The harpies had seen the fate of their companion and converged, thinking the woman was the easiest victim to slay.

Kratos let his revulsion for what crimes the harpies committed decide the matter for him. Swinging the Blades of Chaos, he charged. The first stroke took off a pinion. The second severed a clawed foot. A double swipe of his blades removed one harpy’s head from its birdlike sloping shoulders. “Go,” he said to the woman. “Find your refuge.”

The woman did not plead with him to join her. Another harpy screeched as it swooped like a falcon. Kratos sprang into the air, hurling himself and his blades at the creature, but he was just too far away to reach it.

The woman took the full strike on her back.

Vicious claws opened bloody gashes, and then the harpy beat downward with its wings and plucked the woman’s spine from her body. What remained fell lifeless to the ground.

Kratos ran, jumped onto an overturned crate, and launched himself through the air in a burst of furious attack. One blade sheared through the harpy’s face, from her mouth to her ear. The second blade sliced through her breastbone almost without resistance, opening its monstrous heart to spew black blood across the streets below. Man and harpy fell heavily to the ground. Kratos rolled free, jerked the chains around his forearms, and brought the Blades of Chaos whistling back to hand.

“There! There he is! Kill him! Kill him for Lord Ares!”

Charging toward him were a dozen Minotaurs, followed by six Cyclopes and half a hundred undead legionnaires-and behind them were still more. They choked the road; he could never fight his way clear.

It appeared his quest was about to end in a sudden and bloody failure.

He drew his blades. He was Spartan.

Just because he could not win was no reason to quit.